James Martin can’t believe he’s been eating imitation bouillabaisse his whole life.

A bourgeois concern, granted, but considering the 39-year-old chef trained in France and has been holidaying in the Mediterranean since he was eight, it’s surprising he hadn’t seen an authentic French fish stew before.

“I’ve had my eyes opened,” he says, still slightly in shock by what he saw in the Marseille restaurant that showed him the error of his ways, while filming new Good Food series James Martin’s Mediterranean.

“I always thought it was like a bisque, made from butter, crab and lobster shells, but it’s nothing to do with that at all.

“What I saw in the kitchen was about six litres of oil going into this pan, onions, garlic, heaps of fennel seeds, loads of saffron, and then live scorpion fish still wriggling from the market.

“The chef called it ‘murder by oil…’

“It was then covered in water, brought to the boil for three minutes, blitzed, passed through a sieve, and then chunks of conger eel, monkfish and John Dory were added and poached, and there you have it.

“I couldn’t believe it. British chefs think it’s one thing, but it’s actually that.”

So impressed was Martin with the recipe, he rang chefs back at his newly-opened restaurant The Leeds Kitchen and instructed them to change the bouillabaisse on the menu to the dish he’d seen on France’s south coast.

The show, which begins on November 20, takes Martin to his beloved France, plus Italy, Greece, Spain and Ibiza to explore the best dishes their coastal areas have to offer.

“When you look at all the places in this series, I would have put them in order and said Italy, France, Spain, Ibiza and then Crete. Now they’ve been flipped,” explains the host of the BBC’s weekend food flagship programme Saturday Kitchen.

“People look at Greek food and think it’s all kofte, hummus and salads, but it’s not like that at all.

“I was astounded by what I saw. And Ibiza’s the same. You think of mad Brits on holiday eating takeaway, but Ibiza is absolutely fascinating.”

Martin did get to see the infamous tourists, sunburnt and drunk – but maintains that just a few miles away from the party town of San Antonio, the Iberian island throws up some of the best eateries he’s ever visited.

“We went to this little restaurant. They have no menu, no booking, but you sit down at 1pm and get what you’re given for 30 Euros a head. It’s packed every day. There was no choice, but it was utterly magical.”

The Malton-born star of Strictly Come Dancing isn’t the first chef to go to the Mediterranean, of course. Padstow’s finest Rick Stein has spent much of his TV career bobbing around the region, while Keith Floyd, the man who put the flag in the ground for so many cooks eager for a career in front of the camera, highlighted much that was good about the Med in the early Eighties.

“It’s great to get out here and see these places, because I’m normally on Saturday Kitchen, introducing episodes of Rick Stein or Keith Floyd wherever, while stuck in a kitchen in London,” he says.

“They all have such a good time filming here, and now I can see why.

“People around the Mediterranean embrace a certain way of life, and there’s also a big knowledge and history of food. In the UK, we have this obsession with cheaper and cheaper food. It’s not good food, but it’s cheap.

“Food is a way of life around the Med, but we seem to view it more as fuel. You wake up, eat and go to work. It’s about energy rather than actual food.

“And here,” he says, gesturing along the beautiful promenade in the Italian town of Gaeta, around 90 miles from Rome. “It’s hard to find a supermarket. If this was the UK, there would be three or four along the seafront, but here, it’s all independent sellers.

“We’re all very different in Europe, but we could really learn something from our European partners when it comes to looking after producers and maintaining quality food.

“Before we started filming this series, I knew the food was going to be amazing and the locations would be beautiful, but here, they do what chefs have been banging on about in the UK for years – buy local produce and support the farmers.

“It reminds me a lot of home in North Yorkshire. Only instead of selling pigs, they’re selling olives. I love it.”

Bream with tomatoes, capers and olives

(Serve 4)

1kg sea bream, gutted and scaled

50ml olive oil, plus extra for serving

3 cloves garlic, sliced

400g baby plum tomatoes, left whole

3 red chillies, chopped

100ml water

Small bunch marjoram

50g black olives

10g salted capers

1 red onion, peeled and finely sliced

Small bunch of basil

Heat the olive oil in a large pan. Fry the garlic, chillies and tomatoes for a couple of minutes and then add the water and a few sprigs of fresh marjoram.

Place the lid on and leave to cook for five minutes.

Score the fish on both sides and stuff the cavity with the remaining marjoram.

Place the fish on top of the tomatoes, put the lid back on and leave to cook for 10 minutes.

Finish with the salted capers, olives, basil and the sliced red onion.

Drizzle with oil and serve.

Vegetable fusilli with basil and lemon

(Serves 2)

1 large bunch of basil, plus extra leaves, for serving

1tsp salt, plus extra for seasoning

50ml olive oil

200g fusilli

Handful of green beans, chopped into 2-inch pieces

1 large courgette, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

25g butter

25g grated parmesan

Black pepper

1 lemon, peeled and finely sliced

Juice of another lemon

Cook the pasta as per packet instructions. Add the green beans for the last few minutes of cooking.

Place the basil and salt into a pestle and mortar and grind to a paste.

Fry the courgette in olive oil for four minutes, add the garlic towards the end, with a little of the pasta cooking water.

Drain the pasta and beans, reserving the cooking liquid, and add to the courgettes along with a little more of the cooking water.

Add the basil paste along with a good knob of butter and stir to combine. Add the parmesan and lemon juice, season with salt and pepper and toss to combine.

Serve topped with the lemon slices, basil leaves and a drizzle of oil.

Penne carbonara

(Serves 2)

100g pancetta, thinly sliced

100g coppa (Italian sausage) or Parma ham

200g penne

4 egg yolks

150ml double cream

100g freshly grated parmesan

10g parsley, chopped

Black pepper

Cook the penne in boiling, salted water as per the pack instructions.

Dry fry the pancetta until crispy. Set to one side and repeat with the coppa or Parma ham.

Whisk the egg yolks, cream, most of the parmesan (keep some for serving) and parsley together, season with pepper then crumble in most of the pancetta and ham (keep some for serving).

Drain the pasta, add to the sauce and mix well to coat all of the pasta.

Add a good grinding of black pepper, sprinkle over the remaining parmesan and top with the remaining pancetta and ham.

• James Martin’s Mediterranean begins on Good Food on November 20